Bayou Pages | “North Woods” by Daniel Mason

review by Meredith McKinnie

“The only way to understand the world as something other than a tale of loss is to see it as a tale of change.”

Daniel Mason’s novel North Woods is more than simply the history of a place. It is the telling of American history and the American people’s history situated through a yellow house in western Massachusetts. The house, or plot of land, is the story’s primary character, as we see the history of a place through its occupants, from the humans who inhabit the land to the bugs that crawl in its soil. Spanning 300 years, from colonial New England to present day, the novel begins with a Puritan couple fleeing the religious constraints that prohibit their coupling. While we dive into their flight, barefoot and pursued by Puritan elders, we are quickly transplanted years into the future when an English soldier decides to grow apples on the property, and just as quickly succeeded by his spinster daughters Alice and Mary, who encounter heartache and eventual tragedy. Thus begins a bevy of characters – an abolitionist, a painter, a developer, an historian, a runaway slave, and others – inhabitants of the property who see it burned, rebuilt, expanded, neglected, and rebirthed. Each chapter introduces another character’s story with the thread of a shared location. 

Mason layers his characters by mirroring the layers of time, showing how loss transforms into renewal, how the inhabitants of a space extend well beyond the humans who reside there. Mason interplays narrative forms including letters, poems, lyrics, and diary entries, using the methods of communication as a means of character development and historical archive. The chapters are akin to short stories, with small overlaps from characters far removed in time and experience. Mason also plays with language, showing the evolution of communication. Highlighting the imperative of nature and time as the only eternals, Mason explores themes of love, loss, renewal, betrayal, and regret; he writes, “History haunts him who does not honour it.” Mason affords readers both an aerial view of the property and a microscopic exploration of its influence. 

Throughout this expansive novel, Mason questions how big and small life is, both for the people and the creatures that share an environment. While my description might sound cumbersome and suggest the book may be difficult to navigate, it couldn’t be more readable and intelligent simultaneously. If you are a lover of literary fiction, this is the best title I have read in the genre in quite some time, if not the best of any genre. I give North Woods my highest recommendation and am a new fangirl of author Daniel Mason. 

“The whole house seemed to be holding its breath. It was as if the house, having waited in suspense, was now settling into the cool of night.”